As with many insurance or rental contracts, bank account charges are linked to the consumer price index. As a result, customers are threatened with up to 10.6 percent higher costs this year. But not every sofa rises in price at the same rate. And the customer is not completely powerless either.
The bad news about high inflation continues. For contracts linked to the consumer price index (CPI), the sharp price increases this year will have cost-increasing consequences.
This applies, for example, to insurance or rent, but also to banking products. Most domestic banks adjust the index in April or July. For customers, this means in concrete terms that at Erste Bank, for example, prices for private payment transactions and credit cards will rise by 8.6 percent.
Raiffeisen Landesbank NÖ-Wien rose by no less than 10.6 percent
At the Raiffeisen Landesbank NÖ-Wien it even goes up to 10.59 percent. The reason for this is that the bank uses the November values of 2021 and 2022 as a reference. They were 2 percent higher than the annual average of 2022, which was 8.6 percent.
For the time being, Bank Austria and Bawag did not want to give a specific value. Subsidiary UniCredit last increased rates by 4.2 percent last year and Bawag adjusted its conditions in mid-2021. Due to the sharp price increases since then (energy, personnel, etc.) it can be assumed that both institutes will implement an indexation this year.
Large price differences in the account packages
If the bill is too expensive for you, be sure to discuss a discount with your house bank or switch to a cheaper product. If you only need to do a few banking transactions, you can switch to a basic account or a package for “rare users”.
There are generally cheaper offers for students (sometimes even free account) or retirees. The best conditions for this can be found in the bank calculator of the Workers’ Chamber at banksrechner.at. There you can also clearly see the huge differences in the fees. If, at best, an “average user” does not pay a penny for his salary bill, according to the AK bank calculator, the most expensive product costs more than 270 euros per year. A comparison is really worth money here.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
